MTN Nigeria‘s Chief Executive Officer, Karl Toriola, has strongly opposed the demand for unlimited mobile data. He argues that offering unlimited data is both financially and technically unfe
MTN Nigeria‘s Chief Executive Officer, Karl Toriola, has strongly opposed the demand for unlimited mobile data. He argues that offering unlimited data is both financially and technically unfeasible for mobile networks. Toriola also urged critics to compare Nigeria’s data prices with those in other countries before voicing their complaints.
Speaking at an MTN stakeholder engagement event in Lagos, Toriola said the idea of unlimited mobile data is a global myth unless consumers are willing to pay extraordinarily high monthly fees.
“The issue of unlimited data on mobile networks, it doesn’t exist anywhere in the world, except if you’re paying a fortune,” he said. “There’s a limit because you can never build enough capacity for everyone to be on an unlimited bundle and think you’ll provide a quality of service that is decent.”
MTN Nigerian Subscriber He painted analogy to drive the point home:
“If you decide to give everybody in Nigeria unlimited local air tickets for maybe ₦200,000 a month, do you think the airline just says, ‘ Alright? It doesn’t work that way. You cannot give unlimited, as much as we would desire it; we will not be able to build the networks that you will be able to use in any way whatsoever.”
Smilar;MTN Nigeria CEO, Karl Toriola links absence of unlimited plans on mobile to need for survival
Toriola also made arguably the most striking disclosure of the event, revealing that MTN Nigeria was effectively insolvent before the controversial tariff increase introduced last year.“There was not enough money coming into MTN accounts to pay our bills for diesel, rental, and software licences. We were effectively bankrupt without that tariff increase,” he said. “We had started to shut down the network. Technically speaking, we were insolvent; we were in negative equity.”
He said the tariff increase was not a profit play but a survival measure, and that the investment that followed has been significant.
“Since that tariff increase was implemented, last year we invested 970 billion naira. This year, we are going to invest in excess of a trillion. We invest more in the expansion and maintenance of this company than we make in profits.”
MTN FibreX deployment On data price, Toriola challenged critics to do the mathsFor Nigerians who feel data is expensive, Toriola had a direct challenge. “Influencers, critics, look at the price at which we sell bundles of data, then take that price, go and check in Kenya, go and check in Congo, go and check across the world, and tell me you are not going to tell me that data in Nigeria is one of the four cheapest in the world,” he said.
He acknowledged that Ghana also offers cheap data but maintained that, by almost any African comparison, Nigerian data pricing is among the lowest on the continent.
In the long term, Toriola pointed to fibre broadband as the real solution to the unlimited data question.
Unlike mobile networks, which share finite radio spectrum among thousands of simultaneous users, fibre connections can carry significantly higher volumes of data without the same capacity constraints. “Fibre is unlimited, because once you build that pipe, you can pass as much data as you want through it. You can back up your 126 gigabytes of data and stream your children’s YouTube non-stop, and it makes no difference,” he said.
MTN Nigeria CEO, Karl Toriola, at MTN’s Data on Trial on Saturday, June 6, 2026 His comments come at a time of sustained frustration among Nigerian consumers over data costs and depletion speeds, frustration that intensified following last year’s tariff increase.
The Nigerian Communications Commission approved price adjustments for telecom services in early 2025 after operators argued their revenue could no longer cover operational costs, a position Toriola’s disclosure on near-insolvency now puts in sharper context.
